But you can of course understand my confusion, considering Melinda’s most recent statement:

“Marijuana dispensaries are full of cash and they’re full of marijuana, and everybody knows that…they are at risk of being robbed, and many of them are robbed…people in the community may be supportive of the dispensary until there’s an armed robbery and people come running out of the dispensary shooting guns.”

Ah, I see…

So Melinda wants to close dispensaries as they are in danger of being robbed, what with all that cash inside…

Really.

Then…why not close the banks?

You want to talk about cash inside…especially the banks that are close to schools, yes, they must be forced to shut down now…immediately. And I am sure the people who normally support the banks in their community would quickly change their minds if confronted with armed assailants, coming out of the banks shooting at their kids, their cats and dogs, grandma…hell, shooting at everybody.

Oh but hold on, hold on…

Also according to Melinda, these marijuana dispensaries are committing crimes, maybe not on the state level, but certainly federal statutes so really, she could shut them all down if she so chose, but she isn’t so you see, she’s being fair and reasonable after all.

Fine.

Then again, shut down the banks, especially the ones close to people’s homes because the banks are committing not only federal crimes, but state crimes as well…

Mortgage and foreclosure fraud, not to mention the defrauding of investors by selling derivatives with bogus grade A ratings…you know, all that stuff the banks did to make themselves great profit while helping cause the collapse of the housing market and the ensuing recession, yeah, that little economic morass that cost houses, jobs, pensions?

Right, so this is Melinda Haag’s crusade, this is her choice, either go after the marijuana dispensaries selling medicine to cancer patients, or the banks that are stealing the cancer patient’s homes and pensions…and Melinda chooses to leave the banks alone so she can focus in on those non-profit dispensaries, the dispensaries that donate to charity, give good health insurance to their employees while paying them a livable wage, in the Bay Area…the dispensaries that pay their share of taxes, contribute to city revenue and get few complaints from their neighbors. Yes-sir, Melinda Haag, that devotee to justice orders a shut down, because the dispensaries might be robbed, because they are funneling their product nationwide, because they are a crime center…

Yet, when asked, she and her office will provide no proof for any of these latter charges.

Meanwhile, the criminal banks commit fraud, illegally foreclose on peoples homes, use robo-signers and dangle out all that cash, just an open invitation for multiple, multiple bank robberies at many of their financial crime centers, and many of them within residential communities, near schools, near preschools and damnit, even near maternity wards…I mean, think of the CHILDREN!…and all of these charges are well-documented.

But Melinda Haag does nothing, they all remain open, they agree to a settlement that is little more than a slap on the wrist, financially while nobody, not one of these banking types go to jail.

Melinda closes nothing, does nothing…

Nothing, but get her name in the papers one more fucking time for going after medicinal marijuana dispensaries, approved of within their communities and legally approved by the state of California’s voters.

As Chris Roberts writes in SF Weekly, regarding the allegations by Haag of complaints and crimes around the dispensaries:

“So the feds won’t name the schools, won’t name the complainants, and won’t provide the statistics used to justify the crackdown. But trust them: The problems are real.”

Trust…right…tell ya what Melinda, I’ll start to trust you when the Feds finally really do something to reign in the criminal enterprises known as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Chase…until then, I got nothing for ya’ but scorn. You’re an absolute fraud who may know the law, but knows nothing about justice.

Hell, even GW Bush is impressed with how far to the right you managed to push budget negotiations… you know, to help the people you uh, you promised to help?

Hello…

So, I might as well address this to the highest ranking of you, though I’m not so sure that’s something to be proud of these days…in fact, from where I sit it’s something to be rather ashamed of but nonetheless, this goes out to Obama, Pelosi, Boehner, Cantor, Reid, Geithner, Bernanke, McConnell…

Yeah, all of you public servants(?)

Okay, something is happening in this country that none of you really seem to understand…I mean, have you looked around yourselves lately? In the cities? Have you read the polls? Have you bothered for a moment to look past your office walls, your meeting rooms and political staffers and handlers and their gratuitous nods of the head?

I don’t think you have…

You see, I and a lot of other Americans read the news and I don’t know about you politicians, but what I’m reading lately simply doesn’t make sense.

Now, I happen to agree with Boehner about this, but me and the majority of Americans? Our reasons are quite different from Boehner and the GOP’s reasons for disagreeing with the proposal. Boehner says the Dem proposal is unserious because it raises taxes on the wealthy whereas I disagree with the Democratic’s proposal because it proposes billions in dollars in cuts to Medicare, even more extensive cuts than the Catfood Commission’s proposal. The cuts however, Boehner is almost fine with except he wants them to go deeper than the Democrats have proposed…

Okay, so…in light of all this, what the hell is wrong with you politicians?

You’re not listening…or maybe you are. Maybe you are listening quite intently, you’re just not listening to the majority of Americans, instead keeping your focused ear intently on your campaign donors, the financial institutions, big money lobbyists…essentially anyone but the American people.

Seems fairly evident, but I suspect you all might disagree with this assessment. Yeah, two words to that…fuck you. I’m not stupid, please stop treating me as such.

So then, if you are there in DC to do the work of the people, why is it you choose to ignore the people completely? This is why you have a 9% approval rating, Congress. Oh, and Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and the rest of you GOP hacks, what the American public really wants are jobs. Jobs!!!! And jobs aren’t created by lower taxes on the wealthy. Stop your bullshit, they aren’t. Jobs are created by demand. Demand is created by people with money to spend, keeping the social safety net and unemployment benefits puts money in people’s pockets, which they then spend which creates demand, which creates jobs. Know what else creates jobs? Spending on infrastructure, which again puts money in people’s pockets…and so on and so forth. Austerity makes everybody broke, nobody spends, no demand…it ain’t that hard to figure out…are you all just fucking stupid? Now, I know you have said that you’re spending cuts thus far enacted have created jobs, but they haven’t. In fact, they have done the opposite: REPORT: House GOP’s ‘Job Creating’ Spending Cuts Destroyed 370,000 Jobs.

Oh, and Barack and Nancy? Let’s not get all full of righteous indignation on this one. Last week, the GOP decided to put you guys in the corner by agreeing to one part of your jobs agenda, while linking it with a budget cut item: House GOP Lays Trap For Obama On Jobs Plan. Yeah, the GOP agreed to end a three percent withholding tax on private contractors intended to keep corporations from cheating the government on taxes, and in return the GOP proposed to pay for this by limiting Medicaid eligibility for people who also receive social security benefits.

Wasn’t that nice of them?

Private contractors get the a-ok to cheat on their taxes, paid for by kicking grandma and the disabled off their health insurance.

Well, it would seem this GOP proposal was tailor-made for the Democrats to stand up, just say no, go to bat for those less fortunate and tell the GOP to blow while explaining to the American people what the GOP was trying to get away with…except the Democrats didn’t do this. Nope. Instead, they agreed.

More money for the wealthy, more costs for the poor.

I seem to be picking up on a pattern here…Barack, Nancy, Harry…who are you standing up for?

You agree to Medicare cuts on the poor and kicking some people off Medicaid, which runs counter to what the American people have said they wanted. And you…Eric, John, and Mitch…you are giving more and more money to the wealthy, at the expense of the poor, which again, is the opposite of what the American people have said they want to see happen…

Yes, a pattern.

And then you wonder why thousands of people are hitting the streets nationwide, fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Oh wait, I forget, many of you have said you understand the people’s frustrations. Yeah, great…well I understand that you’re all a bunch of self-righteous assholes, but that don’t turn you into good people, now does it? Nope. And none of you are doing much about that frustration you claim to understand either, except presenting proposals that either do nothing to address income inequality, or will only serve to make it worse.

In these occupy demonstrations, in all of these different cities, stand Americans of every race, age, class and creed. And you know what else they are? They are the disenfranchised of this country. Do you think these people would be suffering the elements, the police brutality if they really felt that voting for one of you frauds would change anything? Doubtful. These protests, these people are the fruit of your labors, those who believe the system to be broken, or if it is working, it sure ain’t working for them…and not for me either. I’ve attended a few of these rallies in different cities and you know what I see? I see middle-aged couples, the elderly, the young, white, black, hispanic…and all these different members of society, they are uniting against you, against your bullshit ways, your bankrupting ways…your Republican power-grabs and your Democrat craven cavings to the financial industry and the banks…

And speaking of banks…

Hey Bernanke and Geithner, do you honestly think we haven’t been paying attention to what you’re currently letting Bank of America get away with? And Barack, these assholes were appointed by you…so you’re on the hook as well. Right now, your crew, with GOP assent, is seeing fit to allow Bank of America to set up American tax-payers for another huge debt, all so this bank doesn’t have to pay for their own investment mistakes, again. Yes, Bank of America has moved 75 trillion dollars in potentially bad derivatives from its holding company, into Bank of America proper…want to know why?

Because unlike its holding company, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America is FDIC insured, so if these 75 trillion dollars in bad derivatives fail, the government (FDIC) will have to pay out, which of course means, the taxpayers have to pay out, bail out Bank of America for more bad investment decisions. Bernanke, Geithner and Obama are allowing this to happen. They are allowing this to happen to you… once again taking the money from the middle class and potentially giving it to the wealthy to compensate for their poor choices.

So back to that pattern:

The Democratic leadership, in the form of Pelosi, Reid and Obama have shown they are quite willing to cut the social safety net, to cut benefits to the poor and disabled, to the elderly so long as the Republicans are willing to allow some marginal taxes on the rich. The Republican leadership in the form of Cantor, Boehner and McConnell are of course unwilling to do this, no how, no way, and in return for their refusal, they want even deeper cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security than the Democrats are willing to offer. Meanwhile, the Fed is letting Bank of America off the hook for bad investments again, with American tax-payers potentially footing this bill if the derivatives go bad…again moving money from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.

Yes, a pattern.

These politicians, elected by the American people only agree on one thing, doing whatever it is the American public doesn’t want you to do while at the same time, doing very little about job creation.

Yet all of you feel you should be reelected.

Why is that?

Since the occupation protests have begun, thousands of protestors have been arrested across this country…but of the people working in the financial institutions who caused the recession that led to millions of lost jobs, of bankrupted pensions, savings, cities and states?

Nobody arrested. None. Zero.

Again, why is that?

Are you simply admitting in cold hard arrest statistics that the rule of law is dead, provided you are wealthy enough to have received a Bush tax cut, extended further by Obama? Is that the established line in the sand? If you qualify to receive a tax break due to wealth, the law no longer applies to you?

I’m thinking that rather than being reelected, what should really happen here is Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Bernanke, Cantor, Boehner, McConnell and Geithner, all of you need to wind up in a cell right next to the heads of the major banking institutions in this country. You all, who have taken it upon yourselves to damn your children’s futures for your own selfish gain.

Pathetic, all of you.

Off to jail, lock them in the Bastille…why not? What do we really have to lose anymore? This way, the rest of us can try this again, we can have our country back, see if we can do better and I’m betting we can. After all, you pathetic politicians have lowered the bar so far…be pretty damned impossible to do worse.

Or better yet, get involved with the Occupy Protests in your city, what else you gonna do? Sit bitching on the sidelines? Vote? Yeah, good luck with that…the people currently in power, and the politicians too would like nothing better than for you to just stay home and vote at the appropriate time for one of the politicians they’ve hand-selected to serve (them) you…

Think about it.

And have a nice day, even the aforementioned politicians…right before you trip down your front steps and chip your tooth on the sidewalks our taxes paid for…and if you bloodied your nose, that’d be cool too. Okay…I’m sorry about that last part, not that I didn’t mean it…I’m just sorry about being petty sometimes, trying to work on that…kind-of.

Oh, and P.S. – To the mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan…resign, and take the members of the Oakland Police Department who caused the violence with you…you’re all one collective disgrace…and to San Francisco (interim) mayor, Ed Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr, stop with the games already…you really want another Oakland on your hands? Seriously…let it go.

I work out every day, but really like Popeye’s chicken so sometimes, one step forward, two steps back.

I rent. I have no debt. I own a car. I don’t want a car but I need it for work, oh and I’m kind of a workaholic.

I am a Taoist, and an Anarchist. I dislike the police. I really do, but because of my job I work with the police every day so go figure…ah, life…funny.

I own almost no furniture, but I have a lot of books, and I read them…

Republicans and Democrats…I am hard pressed to think of a politician from either party you could put in front of my car where I wouldn’t speed up…

I would only agree that British Petroleum, TransOcean, Anadarko, Nalco and Halliburton, or any other corporation should be entitled to corporate personhood if we could put them on trial and sentence their person to the death penalty.

My life? Well, it’s pretty good…can’t complain, actually.

I got plenty of money, don’t want for much, am productive, artistic, meditative, and on a really good day, have enough disgust with people and society to melt a piece of glass at one hundred yards…with one eye.

It’s a gift.

Oh, but why am I so angry?

Well, some people, so I understand, want to have children, houses, health care, credit cards, family, labor day picnics, pay for weddings, funerals, even cancer treatment.

Oh, and you know what else?

These people? These entitled people not only want kids, they actually want to have time…yeah, actual time with those actual kids.

I dunno. I don’t get it either.

Oh, and check this out…these people with their kids and their houses and their family get-togethers?

Yeah, they also don’t want to be buried in debt. They don’t want to have to choose between electric bills and tetanus shots, groceries and physical exams, rent and a decent night’s sleep.

Slackers.

These neo-hippies think it would be a good idea to actually have the time to raise their families and I’m sorry, as a member of the the 53%, who feel to demand changes in the way our institutions operate, to demand the ultra-rich make a little less money, maybe pay their share in taxes in hope for a more equitable society, well, me and Eric Erickson, we recognize that for what it is…

Unamerican.

Seriously.

These bastards actually want the time to make their marriages work, time with their wives or husbands…and not just time over their bills, at the plasma donation center or out picking up aluminum cans, but times on vacation, maybe an hour in the park, go to a movie, go to church, play a board game…Life, Monopoly, Sorry, Clue…anything.

And that demand for time and equality is nothing more than lazy Socialism.

Look, it’s not that I don’t treasure the family, the house, the two cars, the whatever…it’s just that hell, I am a social worker. I have two college degrees, I have no debt or health problems, and very little chance for unforseen expenses. I have no desire to live outside my means, no desire for kids or furniture, time to myself or groceries for more than one person. I have no desire to work more than 47 hours a week, car insurance beyond what’s legally required, a house of my own or new clothes, dental care and fresh food, or gas…nope.

I don’t need any of those uppity trappings.

And since I don’t…

Why in the hell do you think you should?

Look…the American Dream is a subjective moment of subconscious paralysis, and the quicker you realize this, the happier you will be…

Like me.

Financial fraud isn’t a crime, it’s simply being creative. As a modern day American, I recognize my patriotic duty as a simple willingness to play host to every financial parasite and politician.

So to the banks, to those who would deregulate, to their political enablers I lie prone and smile.

Which is probably why when I heard of the Occupy Wall Street protest, my first question was: if they are trying to cause trouble on Wall Street, why the hell are they doing the protest on a Saturday? At the time, I didn’t know it was going to be an ongoing thing, but even when I found that out my cynicism remained. I expected the usual mish-mash from the left, individuals with individual signs representing each and every cause, from PETA to Anti-Police Brutality, from ending the wars to ending whatever else they now wanted to end. I used to live in San Francisco and it would oftentimes seem not a week could go by without some kind of march down Market Street, just like it also seemed that the same people came to every protest; there was no unified message, just everybody cradling their pet cause, making a lot of noise, but really, doing very little.

After all, the civil rights era is long over and the police/government have had forty plus years to figure out how to marginalize a march into nothingness. Sure, maybe marches help build community, but what do they actually accomplish?

So, Occupy Wall Street…cool, yeah…okay.

Well, I’ve been working on my cynicism of late, trying to mute it a bit, which doesn’t mean I now feel protest marches are effective.

I don’t.

But this occupy Wall Street thing?

Been watching it build over the past couple of weeks and yes, their appears to be no unifying message beyond anger at the banks for screwing over this country and anger at the government letting them do it, and believe me you, I get that. I personally wouldn’t have a problem if Wall Street erupted in flames, burned all the way to the ground. Nope. I’d bring beer and marshmallows, celebrate…just like I celebrate these rumors about Bank of America being in real financial trouble, especially now that Kamala Harris and California have backed out of the mortgage fraud settlement. Good. Bank of America belly up? No problem. Fuck ’em. All those bank bail-outs, too big to fail? Government gives the money directly to the banks rather than giving it to the people in trouble with their mortgages so they could then give the money to the banks…you know, banks still get rescued, plus the people get to keep their houses too. Might have been a good idea. Apparently, politicians thought not, you know, because banks give politicians way more money than home-owners and banks wanted to cut out the middle man so yeah, okay, fuck the politicians too, but…I digress. Point is, hell yeah I get it.

So like I said, I been watching the occupation protests, the arrests, the developments, the growth, the union endorsements, the increase in news coverage, their unwillingness to be moved and over time I realized something…

I don’t want to sit around and be a cynic anymore.

That cynicism is too self-defeating.

True, at the end of the day…after the occupation is all said and done, who ya gonna vote for, whatever sociopath the GOP puts up or Barack Obama’s austerity-lite? Those choices won’t change, but something else could, something more important than two political yahoo’s running for president, and that something is the narrative.

That’s what the Occupy Wall Street protests seem to be changing right now.

For the past few months all we have been hearing from politicians, both Democrat and Republican is how this is the age of austerity, cutbacks, tightening our belts. The mainstream media outlets echoed it, the commercials preached it, the banks and corporations nodded their heads in assent…but that is beginning to change. The occupation is helping to prompt questions, getting people to think about Wall Street greed just a bit more. Fucking Sean Hannity actually called in and interviewed/trashed a protestor on his show, so yeah, even the corporations/banks/GOP apologists are now paying attention to the occupation, at least inasmuch as they are trying to discredit the whole thing, and that acknowledgment is change.

And it isn’t just 5000 people in the park in New York anymore, yesterday it was also 3000 people marching against Bank of America in Boston.

The narrative is altering, and the narrative can be more urgent and more important than both the politicians and corporations combined.

People, in their homes, in the bars, in the parks, in the restaurants and at the grocery stores…people talking about the wealthy, the top 1% and how they don’t pay their fair share. People are talking about Wall Street, not as that faraway place with the stock markets and the investors and whatnot, they’re talking about the role of Wall Street, of those markets, of the costs those who work there are exacting on the rest of the country. People are talking about the banks, about withdrawing money from the big banks and going local to their community institutions.

It’s much more talking than usual, and that ain’t a bad thing. This could be the beginning of something bigger and this is not the time for cynicism. Alas, true, this whole episode could fizzle out rather quickly, kind of fade into just another series of left wing war story, like more lost tales from the Seattle WTO uprising, but it doesn’t have to. Much will depend on our cynicism, both individual and collective…yours, mine and theirs.

If you want to write these protests off, dismiss them as nothing, as hopeless, you certainly can, just as you can slag the protestors because maybe you don’t particularly care for their methods…or because they look funny, they’re disorganized or more importantly…maybe you trash them because they haven’t given up. Well, if that’s the case, then you have two choices really, you can leave well enough alone and go figure out why you thought it better to complain from the sidelines, or you can suspend your doubts and get involved, be creative, help, give it a chance and be a part of building a newer narrative because really, what else we got going on?

What?

Sitting around, waiting to vote next year?

Besides, cynicism is precisely what politicians and Wall Street are counting on and I’d rather not give them what they want.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

Seems pretty reasonable, these and many other concerns, most based on problems with a system and its institutions that place profits over the lives of people, both at home and abroad, oftentimes accomplished through the contribution of large sums of money from the banks and corporations, and the wealthiest few of this country, making sure they are heard by the politicians…not the other 99% of us.

So yes, the protestors are out there getting heard, and asking for others to join them in being heard and yes, we can certainly make fun and do nothing, but when done with that, what do we got but the same fucking problems we had before so…

Nah, don’t want to be cynical anymore.

Rather read up on what’s going on, be a part of it and think about change with an open mind and a sense of the possible as opposed to the safe self-conceit of the negative…

It’s our choice, they’re our freedoms.

And we might want to think hard, because if this should continue to grow, if this should eventually provoke change, if this should teach a new generation about what they can do, what they can make happen…do you really think the banks, the mainstream media and the powers that be are going to let something like this ever happen again?

Nope.

Sometimes all you get is one shot.

So, make it count, seek solutions and let’s all change this narrative for good.

GOP cuts funding to the SEC because of “budget deficits,” despite the fact money for the SEC does not come from the budget, but from regulatory charges paid by the brokerage firms the SEC investigates, thus saving the same companies/banks that fucked us into a recession millions while also making it more financially difficult for the SEC to prosecute all the companies that did all the fucking.

Oh, and that recession – nobody in jail, banks made billions.

Oh, and that British Petroleum oil spill – nobody in jail or charged.

Oh, and that Foreclosure Fraud – nobody in jail or charged.

Oh, and the Medical Lobby/hospitals/administrators/insurance companies/big pharma – how many people have died because they couldn’t afford not to? – nobody goes to jail and nobody charged.

Okay then, so does this mean when Republicans and not a few Democrats, including Obama, cut back on the safety net because of the deficit, one debt ceiling and/or budget at a time, while in the same moment, they give ridiculous tax cuts to the wealthy which go a long way towards helping create that deficit…does this mean then, that when I decide to go to the exclusive parts of town or to the Financial District to get my money back, that just like the banks, the oil companies, the insurance and medical industry, that I won’t go to jail or be charged either for theft and/or fraud?

Right, right?

No?

Interesting, then the rule of law must only be kind-of dead, inasmuch as the bottom 99% is ruled by the laws of the top 1%, the same 1% who only calls it class war when the bottom 99 fights back against their greedy, entitled ways…

I suppose it should come as no surprise that Republicans aren’t the only entity Obama and his administration simply rolls over for.

Economist after economist state the people won’t believe in economic recovery until the people who created the recession are brought to justice. And, economist after economist say the banks and Wall Street will not change their ways until people responsible begin to see the walls of jail cells…so, in keeping with these times of paying attentions to studies and experts to seek honest solutions to structural problems, the administration appears poised to let the evildoers of the mortgage fraud scandal off with a fine.

“State and federal prosecutors are pressing to complete a proposed settlement with the nation’s five largest home loan companies over alleged mortgage abuses, even though they’ve only initiated a limited investigation that hasn’t examined the full extent of the alleged wrongdoing, according to interviews with more than two dozen officials and others familiar with the state and federal probes.

The deal with the mortgage companies would broadly absolve the firms of wrongdoing in exchange for penalties reaching $30 billion and assurances that the firms will adhere to better practices going forward, these sources told The Huffington Post. Negotiators met in Washington last week to hash out the settlement.”

So you guys start two wars, deregulate the banking industry and the markets…

The wars don’t end, the investment banks start manipulating markets with the complicity of the Federal Reserve…

Thus, leading to a bunch of bad loans sold as good loans leading to the collapse of the housing market and the near collapse of the banks…

The government continues giving tax breaks to the wealthy so the wealthy will create more jobs.

The government then gives bailouts to the banks so the banks will lend money, extend credit…etc…

But, the wealthy don’t create jobs, they hoard their money and then the banks do the same by not lending, or freeing up credit…

Meanwhile large businesses have found ways via tax loopholes to pay little to no taxes, and due to so many lost jobs caused by the recession, caused by the banks, the tax revenue dries up state and nationwide…

In response to this, the cash strapped government extends the tax breaks to wealthy individuals who continue to not create real jobs…

And all of these actions (or inactions) create a crisis.

But you have a new solution, and your solution is to defund planned parenthood so poorer women can’t receive healthcare, fire teachers so our kids can’t gain a competitive edge, end medicare so grandma can’t see a doctor and attack state employees, raiding their pensions so when they retire they’ll have less money to pay for the health care you’re cutting…while the wealthy and the corporations keep their tax cuts, the banks keep their money and for all the fraud conducted by all of these investment banks that led to the recession, nobody is prosecuted and nobody goes to jail so nobody learns nothing…and essentially are free to start it all over again.

And you call your new plans fiscally responsible, “tightening the belts,” and “not kicking the can down the road.”

In a nutshell, one more time…

The wealthy hoard while pissing away real jobs, the banks keep their profits and consolidate further while the investment banks keep what they made from market and real estate fraud…and you continue to give subsidies to oil companies who also are making record profits while the rest of us pay record prices for gas, food and utility bills.

And for paying attention to this, I’m an asshole?

For noticing that although you may not have kicked the can down the road, you still kicked it hard and it hit the middle and lower class in the balls…oh, and then you helped them to their feet with the belt you tightened around their neck before shoving their livelihood and savings over the cliff you created with your fiscal responsibility.

And if I say the words “class war,” I’m being unreasonable?

Well…what would you call the ongoing plan of the corporations, banks, the state and federal government?

Democracy?

For who, 1% of the country?

I tell you, if I didn’t know better…I might think the GCCF’s Ken Feinberg is running this sham too…

Being rational has led to hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes. Being rational has led to the hyper-inflated salary of CEO’s such as Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America. Being rational has led to crumbling infrastructures, the failings of the levees in New Orleans and the abandonment of Charity Hospital in favor of a huge medical complex that takes even more of your money and destroys a residential neighborhood. Being rational has led to the privatization of water supplies, the destruction of health care, your schools and local business. Being rational has led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Politicians, they love when the American public is rational, so does Wall Street, the insurance companies, and your local police department.

Let me give you an example…

In San Francisco a number of years back, on the anniversary of one of those wars, there was quite the large to-do. Thousands of citizens engaged in a march and rally against the war. The organizing groups applied for the proper permits, stated the appropriate times when it would begin and when it would end. The San Francisco Police Department ushered the crowd along, down Market Street on the pre-planned parade route from the Embarcadero Plaza to the Civic Center in front of City Hall where music was played, vendors sold food and you could even buy the T-shirt to say you were there…

It was entirely rational and everybody was happy, festive, engaged and…nothing.

Nothing happened, a bit of television coverage, and nothing else.

The wars went on, the people went out to dinner, to the bars, home to try to see themselves on television that night.

But here’s a different kind of example…

In Chicago a couple of years back, at Republic Windows and Doors, this factory was set to close down. The employees were all issued their walking papers, they were told to leave, they were given nothing…and they went nowhere. They occupied the factory, they said they weren’t leaving, not until their demands were met, demands that included severance pay, health care…options. The community of Chicago rallied behind them, brought them food, made a spectacle and five days later each employee walked out with severance pay and extended health care.

Those employees were not being rational.

Another example…

Couple of years ago during a May-day parade, again in the city of San Francisco…there was a hidden group amongst the marchers heading down Market Street and they had a plan. They told nobody about their plan. They didn’t ask for permission. They didn’t apply for permits. At the right time, and the right place, while the SFPD were occupied elsewhere, they stole into the business district, took advantage of the street layout, blocked traffic by rolling dumpsters into the street and began smashing the windows of the GAP, Urban Outfitters, Pottery Barn and several others. They then dashed back to the downtown alleyways, changed back into street clothes and walked away. The news media was all over it. It was a story for days. People talked about it at home, at work, both negative and positive. None of the activists were ever caught, and over time they have become legends inspiring hundreds of other people into active participation, either other activists or the hundreds of tourists who watched their movements and went back home, across the country and perchance, dared to ask why it happened?

These people were not being rational.

So, rationality or irrationality…which methods make the difference?

Well, was Ghandi being rational? How about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? How about our founding fathers, were they being rational? How about the union members and activists in Seattle who shut down the meetings of the World Bank, were they being rational?

When those thousands of people marching in protest to war in San Francisco those years back, what if they had suddenly turned right and headed off the pre-planned parade route, would that have been rational? What if they had not stopped at the lawn before City Hall, what if they had gone straight through the door and occupied City Hall, would that have been rational?

Nope, but it would have been more interesting, inspiring and done more for people and their belief in their own power than just buying a t-shirt and having a story to tell…a boring story.

These are not rational times, and they are not rational times because the American people have been cowed into rationality by economic and terrorist fear, fear for their families, their homes, that last bit of the American Dream that Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, that James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley have so far been unable to take away from you…oh, but they’re trying and yes, they are winning… for in the White House, in the Commerce Department and in the Federal Treasury sit their co-workers and former employees, all busy at work trying to find a way to help them do it, to you, right now.

You didn’t vote for them. No, you voted for change, for the Audacity of Hope and what did you get?

You got proposed austerity cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy. You got the state of Arizona denying life saving medical procedures to people who have since died. And why did they die? Because they couldn’t afford the required medical procedure to live.

So how about you…can you afford to live?

Can you afford to be irrational?

What does being irrational even mean?

What does it mean to me, a disenfranchised citizen, now…today?

That doesn’t matter. What does matter is, what does irrationality mean to you? And in coming up with a definition, what can you dream up, alone, in your communities, in your families…and then what will you do about it?

Because the people of rational belief…oh yeah, they’re doing it, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, even as you read this, while none of the powers that be are doing much, if anything to stop them. America is a fire sale and every last one of you, every last one of your kids is on display, on the shelf, discounted, and the rational are greedy and they are buying wholesale in the store that don’t close, ever.

Not unless you close it down, irrationally.

Dream it up, and do it…we’re left with little choice because the rational, both democrats and republicans have set the social contract on fire and the only thing that can put out the flames are you.

Up at five, par usual and scanning the headlines, reading the articles and I don’t know where to begin, what to write about. Brain’s feeling foggy and there’s a whole lotta misery out there:

We got birds falling out of the sky, massive fish kills on the rivers and coasts and the bees, the pollinators of a third of our food supply are dying off, 96% of some populations. Another insurance company out in California wants to raise the premiums 59% on individual policy holders while out in Arizona, the state has decided to save money by denying life saving organ transplants to the poor. In the south, FEMA has been ordered by the courts to go after individual fraudsters post-Katrina to recoup funds, but nobody is going after all of those no-bid government contracts that made executives wealthy at the expense of the people. In Pennsylvania, politicians are allowing “fracking” water, loaded with salt and pollution to be dumped into the drinking water for thousands of residents while the EPA studies how dangerous this water might be and coal companies in the Appalachians continue to destroy whole mountain tops while the government sits idly by. Congress is proposing a new SHIELD Act which would make it a crime for any person to knowingly and willfully disseminate any classified information… concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States which would put most newspaper editors in prison for telling us what the government is doing, with our money. Our financial troubles? According to the new GOP, this has occurred not because of Wall Street’s shakedown or the Banks malfeasance, it’s the fault of union pensions and the size of government, and global warming? A myth, because God said so.

On the Gulf Coast, the Oil Spill Commission released its findings, and pretty much doomed a declaration of gross negligence on the part of BP, by not blaming BP’s rogue management style and their dozens of cost/time cutting moves at the expense of safety, instead blaming it more on systemic management problems, oh and more oil is washing ashore on Grand Isle, Louisiana. No worries though, BP’s stock went up over reports that Shell Oil had considered a takeover and Feinberg, the neutral arbitrator of the escrow fund again publicly stated that only half that fund will be necessary despite the fact class action suits have not been heard and final payments have not been processed, presumably said to assist his bosses stock prices.

And to top it off, another goddamned Kardashian is getting another reality television show.

So what’s a disgruntled social worker to do at this point?

Call in sick to work? Smash my car into a telephone pole? Bitch endlessly about all this to my office-mate, a person who thankfully shares my gloom and doom worldview? (Thankfully, because otherwise I might be considered quite depressing). I could send a letter to the editor. Maybe I could write my congressman? The President? Or organize a march, a demonstration, a rally…?

Nah, how about revolution?

Perhaps a bit extreme…but maybe something to think about anyway, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it next week when the TSA gives me a choice of having a naked photo taken or my genitalia fondled, just to get on a fucking plane, you know…so I can feel safe.

Yeah…thinking, and thankfully my feelings of being overwhelmed tend not to last too long, even though my anger does and revolution, why not? Couldn’t be any worse than what we got right now…yeah, or maybe I’ll just go watch Law and Order reruns or perhaps, check out some internet porn.